Chess grandmaster caught cheating with smartphone chess app

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Smartphones are an extremely useful tool to have in your pocket, not only for communication and entertainment, but also for learning, fact checking, and quickly finding answers to questions. And that’s why we don’t let kids take them into exams, or in this case, chess players use them during tournaments.

Gaioz Nigalidze is the reigning Georgian national chess champion and a chess grandmaster. However, he has been accused of cheating and could now serve a three-year ban depending on the outcome of the claim.

The cheating claim was made by his opponent, Tigran Petrosian, during the sixth round of the Dubai Open. Nigalidze had been making very frequent and long trips to the toilet after playing his moves, which made Petrosian suspicious and led to a search of the bathroom. A smartphone was discovered hidden in some toilet paper in a bin with a chess program loaded on to it. We don’t know which chess app he was using (yet).

This could have been someone else’s smartphone, but Nigalidze’s Facebook account was logged in on the handset. He has denied cheating, but the evidence suggests otherwise. It also looks like a very silly thing to risk your chess playing career over considering first prize is only worth $12,000.

Gaioz Nigalidze is 26-years-old, ranked 400th in the world, and regarded as a very talented player. Using a chess program on his phone would have allowed him to experiment and look ahead several moves. Being a professional player he would easily be able to memorize those moves before returning to the game with an unfair advantage over his opponent.

This isn’t the first case of cheating in chess, and it certainly won’t be the last. It is viewed as a form of high-tech doping and will ultimately lead to players being checked more thoroughly before matches begin and watched more closely throughout.